


Windowpanes

by Highsmith (quimtessence)



Category: The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Yuletide 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:16:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8890465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/pseuds/Highsmith
Summary: There is a life past the graveyard. All Bod can do is live it.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plumedy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plumedy/gifts).



> EDIT: I mucked up the edits and had to do a speedy fix. Hopefully it's OK now. Sorry, dear plumedy, for the mix-up. You can read it now. XD

There is a life past the graveyard. All Bod can do is live it.

*

He travels far and wide without much direction, but more than enough purpose for what seems like forever until his feet get a mind of their own and his heels stick in the ground. He stops then, takes a look around, and thinks, _This is where I shall be for a while._

He makes the most of it. It's all anyone can ever do.

*

It isn't what he thought it would be, this new life, but few things are what we think them to be. Bod's pretty devoid of expectations past the initial moment.

As it is, his heels unstick quicker than he might have expected, had he had any expectations at all, and he finds himself on another path to another place.

People are just faces and all graveyards are silent for him in this new life. He has to reason to stay longer than he feels like it. His feet start walking one day past the town limits, and it's oh so easy to extend a hand and wait for a lonely motorist to heed his sign.

*

This could have been a conversation they'd had a long time ago, when Bod was in that in-between age that had both confused and angered him beyond the telling of it.

"But what is it like? What's out there?"

"It's a big world, Bod. Larger than what you and I can see and feel. My experience of it can't equal yours, and the other way around. Don't you want to feel it for yourself?"

"Yes. No. Not really. I just wish to know what it's like, is all."

"You will."

Bod nods. He doubts it, though.

(He misses the conversations, even the frustrating ones.)

*

These corridors seemed unaccountably endless, never a hand to touch a wall, while now they were uncomfortably cramped and moist, with the distinct miasma of mold and stale things. It was supposed to be his home, his old home, his childhood... but had hardly had the time to be that for him util he'd been plucked from it. It's nothing but a house.

In the same way that one cannot truly know anyone else, but to know them practically by outlining their universe, the sum of elements one perceives, until an entity very much like but not exactly like them is known practically. It is simply an enumeration of aspects and elements tallied through one's own perception that dictates knowing another person. This house is an item in a string. Everything is an item in a string.

This is life. Apparently.

(Should Bod even miss the house he never knew?)

*

This is not a ceiling.

Rough stone. Rotten flowers. An open sky. Misty figures obscuring the stars.

Then, Bod wakes.

(He thinks he is in a bedroom. After all, where else could he be?)

*

Despite what Silas might think, if Bod even knew where to begin to even have an inkling of what Silas might think, Bod remembers.

He remembers the graveyard.

He remembers that subtle, shining knife.

He remembers Silas

Bod has his thoughts, and his dreams, and his days in bright sunshine, but, mostly, Bod has his memories. They are his own. Few things are.

The days passed as days are wont to do. So did the nights. During the twilight hours Bod stared out his window and felt in between the life he was supposed to live and the existence he'd had in the graveyard. Such were the twilight hours.

(Bod can't even begin to figure out what Silas might think, but he can assume. It's the one assumption he's willing to make. He could just as easily be wrong, but it's better to be wrong than to be nothing at all. He might be Nobody, but he is Something.) 

*

Summer wasn't browning into autumn just yet and the stillness of the air seemed to announced every other second an endless summer where night was barely felt and only recognised by the subdued darkness it brought rather than by any cooling of temperature or activity.

The heady scent of melting tarmac; even when there wasn't any to speak of, tangy heady baked earth took its place. The sluggish, stagnant water in the cannopied pond just a few minutes' walk into the park from the front steps of his building of flats.

He spent his days and nights on and on walking the city streets, his feet tapping the ground, leaving their dusty marks.

Bod wondered if he was supposed to leave a different kind of mark on the earth.

He wished he knew how.

(Soon enough, he moved on from that city as well. Marks is tarmac can only be left when fresh. Bod is a tad late for that party.) 

*

It was far from pure coincidence that Bod next settled for a time in Miss Lupescu's hometown. If he had been asked to voice an opinion, heavy snowfall and blistering winds would not have been his choice. The locals were calling it "eventful weather so early in November". Bod was calling it something far less charitable in his own head. 

He learnt the ground there, and the sounds of the wind, and the pathways to take and those he shouldn't. There were quaint, upstanding citizens walking small dogs down cobbled streets and past rickety graveyards and rundown churches. There were hardworking gruff men wearing their Sunday best in front of well cared-for churches laying fresh flowers on tended graves. There were harried women pushing coloured strollers down side streets and past bustling shops and across the way from both the pretty graveyard next to the new church and the mildewed tombstones on the edge of town.

He tried to find a life there, but one did not seem forthcoming. At least, not one that differed so greatly from his previous one that he could track a line between them. He missed the old comfort of the graveyard, yet had none of the novelty of a new life. Mostly, he just missed Silas.

Memories, he found then, were the wanderer's worst nemesis.

*

(He decides it's best to move on after all. He chose a dreary Romanian winter on his first visit. He promises to try again next year.)

*

He gives it another day. And another. And that becomes yet another. He loses track, but, after all, he is hardly on a schedule here.

November turns into December. He builds the fire higher in the hearth and the morning winds hurt his face and his hands. The house he's lodging refuses to stay warm enough to let him properly thaw his insides, however much he tries. And why not? This was the way of houses, and people living or having lived in them had little to do with it.

Sitting by a fire in a bedroom somewhere in this vast world Bod could tell stories. He imagined old age and growing up past what he has done already. Neither of these things sounded likely or concrete things he could actually envision, but they must be. Somehow. For that is life.

At least, Bod thinks it is.

He may be proven wrong.

(He is or he isn't, it's all the same in the end. Age has nothing to do with growing up after all.)

*

It could be another part of life for all Bod knows -- The Walk. He has little enough experience at it to tell. Somehow, though, he thinks not. What sort of life is walking from place to place?

There are The Signs, of course, but Bod is beyond certainty when it comes to those. He would rather wait it out these days. December has turned to January, and he would rather like to get a whiff of heady spring.

He doesn't have much to wait on either count.

*

It's on a Sunday, sunless and with a patchy sky. Bod in the shade by pure circumstance, the crisp, sullen wind picking up speed, tender stray snowflakes whistling by, and there Silas is. And there Bod is. It's five o'clock in March under a patchy dark sky. They're having a late snow after another insecure late-winter heat wave. It could be worse.

Bod doesn't get it at first, until he does.

*

It's the Shadow that gives it away. There has to be a _something_ for there to be a shadow, and Bod can see _somethings_ where there shouldn't be any. Or, at least, he used to, and some things never truly go away, only fade.

Bod tries to See, but a crack of sunlight through the branches of a thickly-canopied tree shines in his eyes. After the furiously blinks it away, his Sight is gonna... but so is the Shadow.

*

More and more Shadows crop up at every turn until the nights turn long and a rainy summer comes along, and Bod feels as if he is losing his mind a little bit.

(He knows what he hopes The Signs to be. Whom they should be. Bod doesn'tgo in for coincidence.)

*

(It happens during the night just the one time, but it's enough. In hindsight, it seems Bod wasn't the only one growing weary of Signs and Shadows.)

*

He wakes up with a start. Opening his eyes for those first few moments seems a daunting, near-impossible task, until he realises they already are. He simply cannot see against the impregnable darkness of the night.

Once he's certain he's indeed awake, it occurs to him he is far from alone.

"Hello, Bod."

The only way is through -- or, in this case, by ushering in a conversation.

"Hello, Silas," he says. His voice is sleep-parched and creaky. "Long time no see. For me, I guess."

"Of course you knew." He doesn't sound surprised. He doesn't sound anything at all.

Bod waits.

"Not much escapes me, but I did feel I should stop by and see about you first-hand. I hope you've been well."

Bod makes a non-committal sound. "Well" is an odd word choice.

"I thought I'd find you in better spirits." Bod doesn't point out he had been pretty heavily asleep.

"Your existence here has been far from what I would have imagined for you."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Bod can't help if he lashes out. It's been a long time. He has questions, but Silas seems content to speak at length, and Bod has missed his voice most of all.

"Living isn't existing, Bod. Although I do applaud you on your choice of location."

Silas might actually expect a reply to that one, but Bod is genuinely stuck on what to say. Defensiveness comes easily, but there are too many statements floating in the air for him to know what he was even defending himself against.

It occurs to him that his string of items making up his days isn't enough to make up a life. By the time that thought washes on the shore of his consciousness he's alone again and half asleep once more.

*

The next day shines bright and early, the rain a memory for part of the morning at least.

Down the side street adjoining his back garden a young mother tries to teach her young blonde daughter a skipping game. Bod watches them, then watches the fraying Shadow next to the creaking barn door, then clears his throat.

"'Neaţa!" he says, the greeting just slightly off from how they pronounce it here.

The mother turns, and Bod waits, and then she smiles as she comes closer to return the greeting, her daughter in tow.

(It's a step on another path. Bod has high hopes. A little guidance never hurt.)


End file.
